We never saw anything like that leak out for the iPad 2. And we never saw a shape prototype like that for the iPhone 5 — and there were many, many leaks for the iPhone 5!

With the revelation yesterday that the Chinese are selling dummy iPad Mini, it’s now clear to me that the orange shape prototype and those schematics above are from case manufacturers running on rumors.

Look at the Apple. That’s not an official Apple, the way that diffracts the light.

So just what the hell is that?

It’s a Chinese fake iPad Mini.

Some damn factory in China is turning out a fake iPad Mini they will try to fob off on the domestic market.

Further evidence is that Gruber himself was confused as hell over the introduction of the iPhone 5.

Here is his post speculating that we’ll see an October event that would combine iPod Touch and iPad Mini introductions: Sharing the Stage:

I’m thinking it makes more sense for Apple to hold two events. First, an iPhone event, focused solely on the new iPhone and iOS 6. Then, the iPhone ships nine days later, and there’s another wave of iPhone-focused attention as the reviews come out. Then, in the first or second week of October, Apple holds its traditional “music event”, exactly along the lines of the events at which they’ve been debuting new iPods for the last decade. (Maybe more of an “iTunes event” than just “music event”, given the rise of other media like TV shows, movies, and books.1)

An event where the iPad Air (cool, but just a smaller thinner cheaper iPad), new iPod Touch (cool, but just an iPhone without the phone), and maybe even new or at least updated iPod music players (eh) share the stage, tied together with the theme of consuming iTunes media content — that I can buy.

When the rumors became rampant that Apple was poised to announce new iPods alongside the iPhone 5 this week, I couldn’t see how they’d structure such an event. I wrote last month that I couldn’t see the iPhone 5 sharing the stage with the presumed iPad Air; the same logic held for sharing the stage with new iPods.

In a sense, I was right. Yesterday’s event didn’t play like one two-hour event. It played like two one-hour events, back-to-back. First the iPhone 5 intro, with Schiller and Forstall talking about the hardware and software. Then Cook returned and it almost felt like he could have wrapped things up and sent us home. But no, he instead started a new, second event: an old-school Apple music event. Greg Joswiak took the Schiller spot for the hardware; Eddy Cue took the Forstall spot for media content and software. Then Cook returned to close things out with his sincere (and true) boast that “only Apple” could do the things we’ve just seen. And then, holy shit, The Foo Fighters.

But he doesn’t make the next logical jump, which would be: Holy shit! Could it be there is no iPad Mini coming at all?

And that’s what I’m thinking today.

We’ve all been led down a path of rumor that’s come from China and nothing that points to anything that is plausibly from Apple itself.

We have seen nothing for the iPad Mini that we’ve seen for the iPhone 5. Where are all the components? For something that’s supposed to be coming next month, we should be seeing a hell of a lot more than we’ve seen.